Brown challenges Newsom to an IQ throwdown!

Democratic state Attorney General Jerry Brown — the former two-term governor expected to make another run in 2010 — has issued the ultimate challenge to newbie Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom. He says he’s willing to do “any test” to prove that he can meet and match any candidate, anywhere — on brain power.

Brown, 71, made the comments on KGO 810 AM this morning, after he was asked about the “generational” differences between himself and the San Francisco mayor, 41, who declared himself a candidate for governor earlier this week.

“If he’s asserting that the year he’s born … somehow makes you better, then I want him to specify: Is that because he can think faster? Is that because he sizes up people better? … I mean, what does it mean? As a bald statement of chronological fact, it is not really very relevant,” he said.

Brown told KGO’s Ed Baxter — we think he was laughing, but listen for yourself: “I’m willing to go for any test that anyone wants to put forward to test the candidates for their acuity, their insight and their ability to size up things.”

The IQ throwdown aside, the AG — while insisting he isn’t a candidate for governor and has been “pretty busy” lately in his job as the state’s top cop — is talking suspiciously like a candidate.

“Anybody who runs for governor can expect to have some competition … I haven’t made up my mind,: he said. “I’ve got plenty to do as AG. … I’m already doing the things that probably will come up in a governor’s race.”

And that means to “bring a kind of a down-to-earth, practical, common-sense approach” to government, he said. Besides, “the people know who I am.”

Asked his reaction to Newsom’s Facebook/Twitter/YouTube campaign rollout this week, which we broke here, Brown said it was all very interesting. But he cautioned it’s more than a year before the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial primary. Few people, he said, are paying attention.

More Brown:

*On his age: “Having been 30 and 40 and 50 and 60, I know what you know and what you don’t know … and as a matter of fact, I know a heck of a lot more today than I did 30 years ago.”

*On Newsom’s suggestion that the San Francisco mayor would bring “fresh ideas” and new blood to the state’s top spot: “I don’t think there’s been a governor in America that’s brought more new ideas on a whole range of topics, from energy to environment to prison reform to support of the arts to school reform (than I have).”

*On the age gap between Newsom and Brown: “If the idea is that when you were born — aside from your intelligence quotient (matters) … whomever makes that statement may need a little more seasoning to really understand what is truly important — and what is trivial.”

AG Brown did get serious, though, with some important stuff today: His office announced he has filed suit against three Wells Fargo affiliates to recover $1.5 billion “for California investors who purchased auction-rate securities based on ‘false and deceptive’ advice that these financial instruments were ‘as safe and liquid as cash.’ “

Now let’s get to the real show: any ideas for that candidates’ IQ test?